1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card design and creation system and method.
2. Description of Related Art
Through time, a wide array of card creation systems and methods have been employed to produce cards for a multitude of applications, including employee badges, student identification badges, membership cards, transaction cards, and other photo identification cards.
Many prior art card creation systems are rather expensive, requiring rather elaborate card production equipment and specially trained operators. In addition, such systems are not suited for making a card on demand such as is often the case with various membership cards, badges, etc. Moreover, few systems are capable of capturing images and printing them on a card. While some systems do exist for making a membership card or the like on demand, these systems are typically rather limited in their capability and oftentimes do not allow storage and/or retrieval of card holder information to and from various database structures. Such systems also do not allow much flexibility in the layout of card designs. Still further, existing card creation systems only provide a predefined data-entry screens, leaving little, if any, flexibility for the user to create or modify the data entry environment.
The card creation system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,528, assigned to applicants"" assignee, addressed many of the disadvantages perceived in the prior art. (This patent, U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,528, is hereby incorporated by reference herein.) While it is believed that the apparatus and method disclosed in the ""528 patent presented significant improvements over the previously known card creation systems and methods, time has shown that there is still room for further improvement.
The present invention provides a card creation system and method which offers numerous advantages and improvements over existing systems.
The present invention provides the desired improvement by providing an improved system and method for interactively creating a card. More specifically, the improved system and method of the present invention comprises a software platform for producing personalized photo identification cards that, among other things, allows a user to create customized data entry screens and card designs.
In one aspect of the present invention, a method for designing a card includes creating at least one card layout and defining a data entry screen for receiving card data. The method may further include identifying a data source for the card data. In specific embodiments, the data source may comprise a database including data fields, and screen fields from the data entry screen may be linked to selected data fields.
In accordance with further aspects of the invention, a card creation method includes defining a data entry screen including a plurality of screen fields and creating at least one card layout, including defining specific positions for a plurality of card fields. Data is input into the screen fields using the data entry screen, and then transferred to one of the card layouts to create the card. The data entry screen definition and the card layouts may be saved prior to inputting data. Still further, a data source having at least one data field may be identified for providing data, and a screen field may be linked to a data field. Data from the data field may then be copied to the linked screen field. Additionally, a card field may be linked to a selected screen field. The created card may be saved and/or printed. In an exemplary embodiment, a card layout is selected in response to the particular data input to a given screen field.
The various methods disclosed herein may be implemented by a computer system. In one embodiment, a data entry screen definition including a plurality of screen fields input by an operator via an input device is received by the computer, and at least one card layout, including specific positions for a plurality of card fields via the input device, are similarly received by the computer system. The entry screen is displayed on a display device, and data is received into the screen fields. The data may be entered by an operator via the input device. The received data is transferred to a card layout to create the card, and the created card is displayed on the display device. Further, the computer system may receive an identification of a data source, and data may be copied from the data source to the screen fields.